Ukraine says ceasefire holding for now
KYIV // Ukraine’s military said pro-Russian separatists seem to be honouring the truce accord reached on Friday to stem months of bloodshed, while urging Russia to pull its troops back from the border to avoid provocations.
No casualties have been reported in the past 24 hours, military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said in televised remarks in the capital Kyiv, the first time that has happened since the insurgents unleashed a counteroffensive last month.
The pro-Moscow rebels and the Ukrainian military had accused each other earlier on Saturday of some breaches of the deal in the hours after it was signed in the Belarussian capital Minsk on Friday.
But the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that he and Russian leader Vladimir Putin had agreed in a phone call that it “was generally being observed”.
Some rebel shelling occurred after the 6pm start of the ceasefire, but so far the truce is holding, he said.
The focus of the conflict, which has reignited tensions between Cold War adversaries, now pivots to negotiations over the political future of the mainly Russian-speaking regions on Ukraine’s eastern frontier, where most of the fighting has raged. Rebel representatives said the ceasefire doesn’t change their goal of independence for Donetsk and Luhansk, which president Petro Poroshenko has ruled out.
“Things have moved off the starting block, but the risks of war resuming are pretty high,” Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst at the Penta research institute in Kyiv, said by phone on Saturday. “Vladimir Putin is playing a risky game because a protracted war would deepen his conflict with the West and bring more sanctions, destabilising his economy.”
President Barack Obama, expressing doubt the ceasefire will hold, said at a Nato summit in Wales yesterday that the US and the European Union will move forward with plans to impose additional penalties on Russian officials, businessmen and companies for supporting the insurgency in Ukraine.
Just hours after the truce agreement was reached in Minsk, Belarus, EU ambassadors in Brussels drew up the 28-nation bloc’s second package of economic penalties against Russia. Provisions include barring some Russian state-owned defence and energy companies from raising capital in the EU, according to a European official who spoke on the usual condition of anonymity.
The EU is also due to expand a blacklist of people and companies subject to asset freezes in Europe. The extra penalties still need the formal endorsement of EU national governments. They plan to give their approval on September 8. The measures would then normally be published in the EU Official Journal on September 9.
Russia, which denies involvement in the rebellion, which has claimed 2,600 lives and displaced more than 1 million people, plans to retaliate against any new penalties, the foreign ministry said in a statement today. Russia last month banned an array of food imports from the EU, the US and other countries that supported sanctions against it.
The ceasefire accord contains a dozen points, including prisoner swaps, which may start as soon as today, Mr Lysenko said. It also includes pulling back troops and creating a buffer zone for the delivery of humanitarian aid from Russia and other countries. The shipments may also begin today, former president Leonid Kuchma, who led the Ukrainian delgation, said yesterday. The four-way talks included representatives from Ukraine, the rebels, Russia and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which will monitor the agreement.
Russia has sought broader autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk since Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych was deposed after months of protests in February, leading to Putin’s annexation of Crimea.
Mr Putin, 61, wants to turn Luhansk and Donetsk into quasi statelets with the right to veto major national initiatives, such as Ukraine joining Nato, according to five current and former Russian officials and advisers.
Mr Poroshenko, 48, said on his website his peace plan follows what he and Mr Putin agreed to by phone, with “significant” steps toward “decentralisation” in Donestk and Luhansk, including special status for parts of those regions relating to the economy and use of language. He didn’t elaborate.
* Bloomberg